I must confess to having written a couple fan fics.  One features Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia undertaking a quest to restore a maiden's honor with Conan of Cimmeria.  The other is a Lord of the Rings / Chronicles of Prydain crossover that just kinda wrote itself one week.  They're both on rpgnet somewhere.

I wouldn't claim to have created anything great in them just explored the implications of the character interactions mostly.  I can't think of any two heroes who would hate each other more than Conan and Reepicheep.

On a less imitative but still unoriginal note I've been working on a Dungeon Crawl story about a party of adventurers raiding a goblin lair.  It actually grew out of various discussions of old school tactics and killing goblin children here.  As with the others I posted it on rpgnet.  It's not that I love rpgnet but there's a place for it there and there really isn't here.  Plus the larger audience gives me a better idea of how well it's received.

Quote from: Simlasa;922165A while back I was at a... symposium?... I saw a talk by a creative writing professor who encouraged her students to write fan-fiction. She said it removed a lot of the hassle of coming up with a setting and characters and such and let the students dig right into the work of telling the story and getting all the parts working together. Makes sense to me.
I could see it helping a GM trying to explore a setting and get a more innate sense of it, make it their own. I think a lot of campaign preparation for licensed settings qualifies as fan fiction of a sort.

My only issue with fan-fiction (as well as with gaming in licensed settings) is that the most of the folks writing it are... fans. It tends to be either weak regurgitations of the original or focus on 'shipping' their favorite characters. Like, I'd love to read some good fan-fiction based on Supernatural... that concentrated on the horror elements and mythology of the show... and resisted the urge for Sam on Dean sexual encounters.

I assure you that there is no shipping in my fic, Flowers On The Wall.

Just anime characters playing solo RPG's because they are bored as fuck. Based on my own recent personal experiences with boredom and contemplating doing a solo RPG to alleviate said boredom.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922136I hate fanfiction.

Mostly because we'll find intelligent life on Pluto before we'll find a fanfic well-written (and that includes the ones that became bestselling novels).

Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the book, not the movie.)

Quote from: Cave Bear;922189Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the book, not the movie.)

Is it wrong that I actually preferred the movie to the graphic novel?

Quote from: Doc Sammy;922190Is it wrong that I actually preferred the movie to the graphic novel?

Not necessarily. Any reason why?

I prefer the graphic novel because Alan Moore was able to tell the kind of story he wanted to tell without executive meddling, and because the medium allows more room to flesh out characters. The characters in the graphic novel were layered, complex, and flawed. I found the characters in the movie to be more three-color and two-dimensional.
Mr. Hyde got reduced to an Incredible Hulk expie, the Invisible Man got turned into comic relief, Alan Quartermain lost the drug addiction subplot, etc.

But I will admit that the movie was a fun, light romp.

Quote from: Cave Bear;922191Not necessarily. Any reason why?

The comic is a bit pretentious. The movie is a lot less full of itself.

Quote from: Bren;922196The comic is a bit pretentious. The movie is a lot less full of itself.

We're talking about a comic where [SPOILER ALERT]

Spoiler

...that golliwog guy from the marmalade jars has sex with two anatomically correct wooden dolls and flies an airship.
Mr. Hyde rapes the invisible man to death and swallows a martian whole.
And Harry Potter was the antichrist.

In what way was the book pretentious? Is it because it was too well written for what it was?

Quote from: Cave Bear;922197In what way was the book pretentious? Is it because it was too well written for what it was?

I wouldn't say it is too well written and its been quite a while since I looked at LoEG, so I can't point to any particular thing. The comic seems to take itself too seriously given that it is a potpourri, well let's just call it a pot-luck stew, of other people's creations. Some of the pretentiousness is Moore himself as much as it is the comics.

Quote from: Bren;922200I wouldn't say it is too well written and its been quite a while since I looked at LoEG, so I can't point to any particular thing. The comic seems to take itself too seriously given that it is a potpourri, well let's just call it a pot-luck stew, of other people's creations. Some of the pretentiousness is Moore himself as much as it is the comics.

In what way is Alan Moore pretentious?

Quote from: Cave Bear;922203In what way is Alan Moore pretentious?

As one example, he is more than willing to use and abuse the intellectual creations of others for his own ends (e.g. the literary characters he appropriated for TLoEG, the inspirational superheroes for the Golden Age Watchmen) while bitching about how licensees choose to use his creations (e.g. film versions of his works).

And a quick search for quotes by Alan Moore turned up this[ATTACH=CONFIG]418[/ATTACH]
So it's lazy when others do it to his art or to art he likes. It's insightful when he lazily does it to the art of others that he doesn't like. Kind of the definition of pretentious, n'est–ce pas?

Quote from: Bren;922208As one example, he is more than willing to use and abuse the intellectual creations of others for his own ends (e.g. the literary characters he appropriated for TLoEG, the inspirational superheroes for the Golden Age Watchmen) while bitching about how licensees choose to use his creations (e.g. film versions of his works).

First of all, that's called being a hypocrite, not pretentious.
Second of all, the literary characters used in TLoEG were public domain by that point; their creators were long since dead, and couldn't care anymore.
Third, the inspirational superheroes for Watchmen were just that: inspirational. He didn't specifically use them by name.

Licensees aren't using Alan Moore's creations as inspiration. They are taking his creations whole cloth BY NAME and bastardizing them.

Big difference there.

Quote from: Cave Bear;922209First of all, that's called being a hypocrite, not pretentious.

Hypocrisy and pretentiousness are not mutually exclusive. The definition of "pretentious - attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed" seems to fit a number of Moore's statements. But if you prefer "whining hypocrite" to "pretentious auteur" as a description for Moore, I'm happy to concede the point.

QuoteLicensees aren't using Alan Moore's creations as inspiration. They are taking his creations whole cloth BY NAME and bastardizing them.

No the licensee is using his creation per the license that he gave them. Moore didn't have to license his creations. He chose to license them. For money. Then whined about the way the licensee used the license that he provided to them.

QuoteBig difference there.

I agree that Alan Moore selling out* to Hollywood and then bitching afterwords about what Hollywood did with what he sold them is different than H. Rider Haggard being a dead creator who was neither paid by Moore nor given a choice as to whether or not to let Alan Moore use his ideas. Haggard doesn't get to complain because his works is out of copyright and he is dead. Moore can complain because he is alive. But since he agreed on more than one occasion to license his creations, my sympathy for him not getting the movie he would have liked to see made but didn't pay for is limited. Not non-existent, but definitely limited.  





* I know a license isn't a sale but I'm not using the term sale or the phrase "selling out" in a strictly legal sense.

I don't write gaming fanfic, but I read a fuckton of it. Except the publishers call them "novels" and sell them on Amazon. Seriously, all the 40k novels, Star Trek / Star Wars / Whatever novels, etc are all just pro-written fanfic and I devour that stuff like fries from McDonalds.

Did you see Cruesader's post about the new 40k army based off Genestealer Cults? My first thought was "ooh, I wonder if we're gonna get a novel?"

Quote from: tenbones;922117I'm in my Tron-suit. I'm ready to LARP. COME AT ME One Horse!!!!!!

I bask in the insane glory of this post.

Alas OHT, I must also don my Tron-suit and become ready to LARP.

[Psst, tenbones! WTF does that mean?]

Quote from: Doc Sammy;922122I'm sorry. Forgive me if I'm breaking any rules, I didn't know. And if I didn't break any rules then I'm sorry I upset you.

You're all good. Fanfic gets a bad rap.

Quote from: TristramEvans;922128Thats as far as I got before deciding I'd rather waste my time doing things that didn't hurt my brain

That was surprisingly fun fanfic...perhaps you have practiced this talent before?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;922137The only difference between "fanfiction" and normal fiction is one is on a shelf. Most myths are just old fanfiction.

Absolutely.

You double nailed it with the reference to myths.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;922190Is it wrong that I actually preferred the movie to the graphic novel?

Yes, citizen. Report to your nearest self-termination chamber.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;922137The hate for fanfiction is kind of random.

Not really.  Fan fic isn't inherently bad but there is an awful lot of fan fic out there that is very, very bad.  There is a large amount of it that is basically unreadable.  I don't mean stuff that is a bit hard to get through.  I mean entire stories written in text speak without a single capital letter or punctuation mark in sight.  All fan fic isn't terrible but a lot of it is and sorting costs are a thing.  

Quote from: Cave Bear;922209Third, the inspirational superheroes for Watchmen were just that: inspirational. He didn't specifically use them by name.

Originally, he did.  Those were supposed to be the original Charlton Comics characters.  DC didn't want the characters ruined for future stories so they either asked Moore to change them or made him change them depending on who you believe.  He made some minor costume changes and renamed them.

There was a Harry Potter Book (that supposedly 7 I think) I read. It was totally fan fiction, but it wasn't that horrible. It certainly had less plot holes then the actual books.